Health Minister Hits Out At His Own Department For Failing To Mention Him In Its Tweets

An analysis was carried out on twitter posts by the Department of Health, after Health Minister Stephen Donnelly asked why he wasn't being mentioned in them.

The analysis was completed by a spokesperson for the Minister in Mid January, during the peak of the pandemic.

According to the Irish Times, it showed other state agencies were given 78 mentions, while Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan was included 21 times, but Minister Donnelly wasn’t mentioned once.

According to the report, in the two weeks after the correspondence Minister Donnelly was mentioned in two tweets and the department retweeted 12 of the Minister’s tweets.

The report says Stephen Donnelly has 68,000 followers, while the Department of Health has 124,000. It compares those figures to his constituency colleague in Wicklow, Minister Simon Harris, who has 212,000 followers while his department has fewer than 10,000.